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Great Expectations
‘
I’
ll show you wrist,’ repeated Mr Jaggers, with an immovable
determination to show it. ‘Molly, let them see your wrist.’
‘Master,’ she again murmured. ‘Please!’
‘Molly,’ said Mr Jaggers, not looking at her, but obstinately
looking at the opposite side of the room, ‘let them see
both
your
wrists. Show them. Come!’
He took his hand from hers, and turned that wrist up on the
table. She brought her other hand from behind her, and held the
two out side by side. The last wrist was much disfigured – deeply
seamed and scarred across and across. When she held her hands
out, she took her eyes from Mr Jaggers, and turned them watchfully
on every one of the rest of us in succession.
‘There’s power here,’ said Mr Jaggers, coolly tracing out the
sinews with his forefinger. ‘Very few men have the power of wrist
that this woman has. It’s remarkable what mere force of grip there
is in these hands. I have had occasion to notice many hands; but I
never saw stronger in that respect, man’s or woman’s, than these.’
While he said these words in a leisurely critical style, she con-
tinued to look at every one of us in regular succession as we sat.
The moment he ceased, she looked at him again. ‘That’ll do, Molly,’
said Mr Jaggers, giving her a slight nod; ‘you have been admired,
and can go.’ She withdrew her hands and went out of the room,
and Mr Jaggers, putting the decanters on from his dumb-waiter,
filled his glass and passed around the wine.
‘At half-past nine, gentlemen,’ said he, ‘we must break up. Pray
make the best use of your time. I am glad to see you all. Mr
Drummle, I drink to you.’
If his object in singling out Drummle were to bring him out still
more, it perfectly succeeded. In a sulky triumph, Drummle showed
his morose depreciation of the rest of us, in a more and more
offensive degree until he became downright intolerable. Through
all his stages, Mr Jaggers followed him with the same strange
interest. He actually seemed to serve as a zest to Mr Jaggers’s wine.
In our boyish want of discretion I dare say we took too much to
drink, and I know we talked too much. We became particularly
hot upon some boorish sneer of Drummle’s, to the effect that we
were too free with our money. It led to my remarking, with more
Volume II
213
zeal than discretion, that it came with a bad grace from him, to
whom Startop had lent money in my presence but a week or so
before.
‘Well,’ retorted Drummle; ‘he’ll be paid.’
‘I don’t mean to imply that he won’t,’ said I, ‘but it might make
you hold your tongue about us and our money, I should think.’
‘
You
should think!’ retorted Drummle. ‘Oh Lord!’
‘I dare say,’ I went on, meaning to be very severe, ‘that you
wouldn’t lend money to any of us, if we wanted it.’
‘You are right,’ said Drummle. ‘I wouldn’t lend one of you a
sixpence. I wouldn’t lend anybody a sixpence.’
‘Rather mean to borrow under those circumstances, I should
say.’
‘
You
should say,’ repeated Drummle. ‘Oh Lord!’
This was so very aggravating – the more especially as I found
myself making no way against his surly obtuseness – that I said,
disregarding Herbert’s efforts to check me:
‘Come, Mr Drummle, since we are on the subject, I’ll tell you
what passed between Herbert here and me, when you borrowed
that money.’
‘
I
don’t want to know what passed between Herbert there and
you,’ growled Drummle. And I think he added in a lower growl,
that we might both go to the devil and shake ourselves.
‘I’ll tell you, however,’ said I, ‘whether you want to know or
not. We said that as you put it in your pocket very glad to get it,
you seemed to be immensely amused at his being so weak as to
lend it.’
Drummle laughed outright, and sat laughing in our faces,
with his hands in his pockets and his round shoulders raised:
plainly signifying that it was quite true, and that he despised us,
as asses all.
Hereupon Startop took him in hand, though with a much better
grace than I had shown, and exhorted him to be a little more
agreeable. Startop, being a lively bright young fellow, and Drummle
being the exact opposite, the latter was always disposed to resent
him as a direct personal affront. He now retorted in a coarse
lumpish way, and Startop tried to turn the discussion aside with
214
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